Dan Rooney Read online

  That night Dad and I discussed the situation. He said, “Maybe you should think about it. I hope you know what you’re doing—don’t make a mistake.”

  Was I making the right decision? We were two weeks away from our regular season opener against Green Bay. But I knew in my heart the team needed to rebuild with fresh talent—we’d never do it with Buddy at the helm.

  The next morning, Buddy saw I wouldn’t back down, and I accepted his resignation. The next day, after talking about it with the Chief, I notified Mike Nixon, our assistant coach, that he’d be running the team this season. Nixon was a Western Pennsylvania guy and a University of Pittsburgh graduate who had played and coached under Jock Sutherland. Mike had gone on to coach at Notre Dame and with the Washington Redskins. He was no slouch, but I knew he wasn’t the man to take the Steelers in a new direction. But as an interim head coach, with only days to go before the first game of the season, I figured we had little choice but to keep him on. We’d review his position at the end of the season.

  Nixon was a disappointment, and we had one of our worst seasons in years, 2-12. We needed a new coach, and this time we weren’t going to hire just anyone. The process would be thorough and thoughtful. I scoured the country in search of coaching talent, professional and collegiate, and came up with five good prospects. I called Bill Austin, assistant coach for Los Angeles, who had once served as assistant coach under Vince Lombardi during the Packers’ glory years. I asked him to come to Pittsburgh for an interview. Austin had played seven years for the New York Giants before going to Green Bay.

  Bill interviewed well. He seemed like a guy we could get along with, so my father called Vince to get the inside story. Lombardi thought the world of him, and said he’d make a terrific head coach.

  That was enough for Dad. “Let’s hire him!”

  “Wait!” I said. “This is only our first interview. Let’s take a look at the other guys.”

  “If Vince says he okay, let’s take him!”

  That’s the way my father operated. If he could, he’d hire a friend. If he couldn’t, a recommendation from a friend was often good enough.

  And so we hired Bill Austin. Sure, I was running the team, but the Chief was the boss. When he stepped in to make decisions like this, I sometimes joked with him: “What are you doing, pulling out your stock certificate on me?” We’d laugh about it, but his decision was final.

  I was trying to bring the Steelers into the modern era, and I knew the right coach was the key. In this case, the hiring process had been disrupted. It was a single interview; the Steelers deserved better.

  The Chief liked to loaf with the coaches and talk football and everything else under the sun. When making a decision about anything, my father had a tendency to give equal weight to all opinions. His world was a perfect democracy—one man, one vote. For instance, some guy who just happened to be in the room—his driver, the groundskeeper, a custodian, a North Side crony, or his accountant—would offer advice, and Dad would listen. If there were five people present, there’d be five votes. I used to say to him, “That doesn’t work. This guy is a good guy, but he doesn’t know anything about what were talking about.” When it came to football, this tendency to listen to just anyone drove me crazy.

  Dad didn’t take football as seriously as I did. His passion was baseball. Everything revolved around baseball. Whenever we went on long drives, he would fiddle with the radio dial constantly trying to tune in a baseball game. It didn’t matter what team—any game would do. He’d settle for static on a baseball station rather than listen to a crystal-clear football game. The Chief was a great boxer and a good football player, but baseball was his game. When push came to shove, baseball always won out.

  During Austin’s three-year coaching career with the team, both the Steelers and the Pirates contracted with KDKA Radio to broadcast games. My father was fine with this arrangement, but I couldn’t stand it, because the Pirates would push us off the air whenever the teams were scheduled to play at the same time. When that happened, the Steelers would be forced to an FM or a short-range, 5,000-watt station. I remember once the Pirates had to play a makeup game on a Sunday at the same time our game was scheduled. KDKA called me and said they wanted to bump the Pirates and air the Steelers game.

  I told them, “Great! We’ve been waiting years for this!”

  But then Jim Herron, the Pirates’ business manager, called Dad and put the pressure on. Now, Dad’s office was next to mine, and I remember arguing with him about it.

  He said, “You can’t interfere with the baseball game.”

  “But this means the Steelers have arrived. KDKA wants to get the better ratings. We’ve got more fans than baseball!”

  “You can’t do it. It’s baseball.”

  He told me I just didn’t understand, and he was right. I could never understand his unswerving devotion to baseball. In his mind, it would always be America’s game.

  In the three seasons Austin coached the Steelers, the team went 11- 28-3. He modeled his coaching after the legendary Lombardi, but Austin was no Lombardi. He could execute Lombardi’s instructions, but as head coach of the Steelers, he was over his head and didn’t have the creative spark that outstanding coaches have. He put great stock in the Knute Rockne-style locker room pep talk—“Win this one for Mr. Rooney” or “Win this one for Pittsburgh”—but he never inspired the team. Andy Russell once told me that some of our players on those Steelers teams who had been in Green Bay when Austin was an assistant there remembered the rah-rah speeches he gave in Pittsburgh were the same—verbatim—as the ones Lombardi gave the Packers in Green Bay.

  Austin had a knack for reading defenses and could occasionally exploit weakness and come up with big offensive plays. He was tough, and believed in hard-hitting, basic football. And because his background was as an offensive line coach, our line did show some improvement. But he beat the players up in practice. Many of them were out of shape, especially since Austin did not advocate weight-training, arguing in favor of intense drills. He believed an athlete could “play himself into shape”—but he had to play all-out in practice in order to effectively simulate real game conditions. This took its toll on the players, who began to dread practices. Injuries mounted.

  I remember the day Austin lost the team. It was a hot, humid afternoon at St. Vincent during summer camp. Austin didn’t feel the players were giving their all. He didn’t like the team’s performance or its attitude. In a misguided effort to regain control, he pushed every man to his limit. He demanded they play the whole scrimmage with the intensity of a goal-line drill—all-out, full speed, as if it were a real game.

  This scrimmage resulted in a number of serious injuries, not to mention minor bruises and sprains. Among the wounded were some key players. Linebacker Bill Saul wrecked his knee and his career. Defensive tackle Ken Kortas’s sprained ankle nearly knocked him out of the opening game and slowed him down for the rest of the season. Jim “Cannonball” Butler’s damaged knee sidelined him for most of the season and severely handicapped the Steelers’ running game. Defensive back Paul Martha made a hit that split his helmet down the middle like a cracked nut, leaving him with a concussion and a serious cut over his right eye.

  That’s when Austin lost the team. The players no longer had confidence in their coach. Austin responded the only way he knew. He threw tantrums and publicly berated players. The team’s discipline deteriorated on and off the field. Drinking by some of the players became a problem.

  Bill Austin is the only coach I felt I had to yell at. On Mondays, after games, we’d be in the Roosevelt Hotel or the deli next door, and I’d say to him, “You have to run the ball!” or “What was your thinking when you passed deep on second down!”

  This kind of second-guessing wasn’t me, but I knew I had to do something to get us back on track. We lost not because we didn’t have good players. Remember, we had guys like linebacker Andy Russell, running back Rocky Bleier, guard Sam Davis, defensive back Paul M
artha, and punter Bobby Walden.

  Austin had lost the team, and I knew I had to make a change. By the end of the 1968 season, I had already begun the search for a new coach. I didn’t tell Austin, but he must have seen the handwriting on the wall. With the season’s 2-11-1 record, he should have.

  The day after the last game of the season, I planned to meet with Austin to tell him we couldn’t use him anymore. But before I left for the office, Patricia informed me that it was time to take her to the hospital for the birth of our ninth child. We arrived at the Mercy emergency room entrance, where Dr. Datillo greeted us. By now he was an old friend—he had delivered Duffy, John, and Jim—and we had great confidence in him. This was going to be a busy day. Doctor Datillo said, “Don’t worry. You’ve got plenty of time to go to the office and take care of business. In the meantime, Patricia and I will take care of things here.”

  At the office, Austin was waiting for me.

  “I’m sorry Bill, it just isn’t working out,” I said. “Thank you for coming to Pittsburgh and for your three years with the Steelers, but we’re going in another direction.” He seemed to know what was coming and was very gracious.

  We talked for a while, and I felt comfortable enough with him that I called a press conference for the afternoon. I invited Bill to the conference and gave him an opportunity to speak after I announced there’d be a coaching change. It all went well, and Bill and I parted on good terms.

  Just as the reporters rushed off to file their reports, my secretary, Rene Seavy, came in and said the doctor was on the line. “Dan, you have a beautiful, little girl.”

  I drove over to the hospital to see Patricia and baby Joan. Everything had gone fine. Looking into Joanie’s face for the first time reminded me what’s important in life. At times football consumed me, but the miracle of our nine children—Art, Pat, Kathleen, Rita, Dan, Duffy, John, Jim, and Joan—mattered more to me than anything. Family, Faith, Football—those are my priorities. As future events would unfold, I’d have to work to keep things in perspective.

  On Monday, January 13, 1969, the day after Super Bowl III, Chuck Noll and I met for the first time. We talked for more than two hours. Noll’s general knowledge of football and his specific knowledge of the Steelers’ strengths, weaknesses, and potential struck me as extraordinary. I mean, it’s the day after the Super Bowl, with all the attendant hype, hoopla, and pressure, and he’s telling me details about our offense and defense I would have thought only our own coaches would know. He pointed out that the Steelers had traded away their future. He thought the way to build a championship team was through the draft. Get young, raw talent, then teach the fundamentals of the game. Above all, he counseled patience. He knew it would take some time to rebuild the team and instill in the players a winning attitude. It was clear from this very first meeting that Noll was not about building a good team—he wanted nothing less than a Super Bowl championship team.

  Chuck and I hit it off from the start. Why wouldn’t we? We were both thirty-five years old. He’d grown up in Cleveland, a working-class city much like Pittsburgh, and attended Benedictine High, a Catholic school, where he played football as a running back and defensive lineman. At the University of Dayton, he made an impression as an undersized guard and linebacker. The coaches matched him up against bigger players, forcing him to learn techniques that would offset the size difference. He had to play smart.

  In 1953 Paul Brown recruited him. He played seven seasons with the Cleveland Browns as an offensive guard and linebacker. Brown respected Noll’s knowledge of the game and once said Chuck could have called the plays as well as the quarterback—or maybe the coach. I think that’s right. While Chuck was playing for the Browns, he also attended Cleveland Marshall Law School at night. He told me the reason he chose football over law was because he didn’t really like the constant confrontation and arguments that come with being a lawyer. I’m sure there are a lot of NFL officials from his time as a head coach who would laugh if they heard that. Then, in 1960, when the American Football League got started, Sid Gillman lured him to the West Coast to coach for the Chargers.

  His good reputation as a defensive coach attracted the attention of Don Shula, who brought him to Baltimore as the Colts’ defensive backfield coach. By the end of his three-year run in Baltimore, Noll had taken charge of the entire defense. During his years as coach for the Chargers and Colts, Noll had learned how to win.

  No question about it. Noll impressed me, but this time I was determined to go through a thoughtful and systematic hiring process. When I told my father about my interview with Noll, he said, “Sounds pretty good. Keep him on the list.”

  We interviewed Joe Paterno. In three years as head coach at Penn State, Joe’s Nittany Lions racked up an impressive 24-7-1 record. He topped off his 1968, 11-0 season with an Orange Bowl victory over Kansas. The forty-year-old Paterno was a coach’s coach and an outstanding teacher. Joe and his wife Sue were good friends of mine before he was the head coach at Penn State. Joe and I attended coaches’ conventions and loafed together when we could. When he came to Pittsburgh recruiting for the Nittany Lions, I would tell him about the kids from North Catholic. Of course I saw him when he would speak at banquets in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. He talked to me when he got offers to coach in the NFL, and I always gave him the best advice I could. After the first interview, we were interested, but it became clear Joe was committed to Penn State. So we turned to the other candidates on our short list, interviewed them, and circled back around to Noll.

  The second time I met with Chuck, the Chief sat in. He saw right away Chuck was a good man. He had character and integrity. Though he wasn’t from Pittsburgh, he appreciated the city and understood the people. My father and I both picked up on his intensity and his passion for winning. He was our kind of guy.

  Though we didn’t agree on every issue, I admired his honesty and willingness to stand up for what he believed. We wanted someone who shared our philosophy, but not a yes-man. We needed a coach who could take the team, mold it, and make it his own.

  By the third meeting, we were convinced Noll was our man. For this last interview, he brought his wife and son to Pittsburgh. Marianne and Chris stayed at our house. While Marianne and Patricia talked about school and housing, Chris and our kids played in the backyard of our Mt. Lebanon home. We knew Chuck had interviewed with other teams, Buffalo and Boston, but all of us seemed to know that Pittsburgh was the right fit.

  On January 27, 1969, we announced Chuck Noll as the Steelers head coach and introduced him to the Pittsburgh press corps. The reporters noted that Noll was the fourteenth head coach in the Steelers’ thirty-six-year history. One writer asked him why he thought he was the guy who could end all the years of losing football teams in Pittsburgh. I loved Chuck’s answer. He looked the reporter right in the eye and said, “Losing has nothing to do with geography.” We’d had a new coach every two or three years. If Noll was the guy we thought he was, we’d put a stop to this revolving door.

  Chuck hadn’t even unpacked his bags when the 1969 draft began on January 29, 1969. For the last three years he had personally scouted Joe Greene, a six-foot-four, 275-pound defensive tackle at North Texas State. Chuck saw something special in Greene: He refused to lose. In his three-year career at North Texas, he had lost only five games and acquired the nickname “Mean Joe,” though Greene himself hated it. Initially, Chuck was drawn to Joe’s ferocious play, but looking deeper, he saw a natural athlete who had the potential to be a team leader. Noll believed a man had to be a great player on the field before he could become a team leader. A leader didn’t just talk a good game—he played a good game. In Noll’s mind, Greene would be the Steelers’ number-one draft pick.

  The Steelers’ scouting corps, however, had been looking at quarterback Terry Hanratty. Terry was a Western Pennsylvania boy from Butler and a Notre Dame All-American. In 1966, he had led the Irish to a national championship.

  My brother Art came to the Steelers in 1964, and by
1969 he headed our scouting corps. In the mid-1960s, Buddy Parker came up with the idea for a scouting combine. Under Parker’s direction former Steelers cornerback and later scout, Jack Butler, established the multiteam scouting collaborative known as LESTO (Lions, Eagles, Steelers Talent Organization). I talked to Jack almost every night and reviewed with him the operations of the combine. When the Chicago Bears later joined, it became BLESTO. The combine allowed member clubs to scout college talent across the nation, while sharing the expense four ways. BLESTO scouts tested and scored players, providing measurable information—weight, height, speed, strength, and productivity—as well as intangibles like intensity and attitude. This system vastly improved our ability to scout and make good draft decisions. It was a far cry from the days of Ray Byrne’s letters, newspaper clippings, and three-by-five cards.

  Under Butler’s leadership, BLESTO became one of the best scouting collaboratives in football. For fifty years, he did a great job and trained most of the good scouts in the NFL.

  Noll took into account BLESTO information, but relied heavily on his own knowledge and keen sights. He knew exactly what players he needed. First, he would build his defense. He always said, “In order to win a game, you have to first not lose it.” Chuck picked Joe Greene—not Hanratty—in the first round.

  He didn’t even have business cards yet, and already he had made one of the most important draft selections in Steelers history. He would build the team on Joe Greene’s broad shoulders. Hanratty came to us in the second round. Bill Nunn advised Chuck and Art to draft defensive lineman L.C. Greenwood, who with Joe Greene would make up half the famed “Steel Curtain” of the 1970s.

  It was a good start.

  Now Noll had to win the team. He had to get them together and make them think and act as one. They had to care about winning—and they had to care about one another. He knew he couldn’t build a championship team without that kind of closeness. This was easier said than done. From the very first there was trouble. Joe Greene, our Steelers number-one draft pick, held out in a salary dispute and reported to summer camp at Latrobe a day late.